Sea Brine
by bluethursday
Summary: The sea, darling child is just another word for home. In which Tim pulls a Little Mermaid.


_Summary:The sea, darling child is just another word for home. In which Tim pulls a Little Mermaid. _

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

...

**Sea Brine**

Tim looks out at the sea, the water. He rests his hands on the railing, the ship rocking slightly with the waves.

His feet leave dark patches on the wood of the deck, stains settling where his feet have been despite the rain falling from above. He wrapped them this morning and every two hours after, careful intervals made to handle the bleeding, take care of the injury.

His soles are raw, and it's hard to walk through such pain but he manages just another injury, just another pound of flesh given for the just, for justice.

He watches the waves and he thinks of women with fish tails and voices lovely enough to drown a grown man. To lure him out to sea and feast on his liver and bones. He remembers the sharp nails his mother hid under her curled hands.

_The sea, darling child is just another word for home. _

He remembers her walking out to the waves one day never to come back, the ocean washing away the footsteps she left in sand. An accident, drowned at sea, but they never found the body and Tim could have sworn he saw scales, silver and blue glinting the morning sun, disappearing into the depths of the blue.

But he was only a child, and children often see what children will, a trick of the light, some other fish, a bedtime story to console his scared little mind that his mother hadn't killed herself in front of him, hadn't turned into sea brine and froth.

A childish tale for a scared little boy.

He swears he can hear her singing and he knows what they'll say. He knows what they'll think. An accident. Lost at sea. Just like her. He wonders if they'll find a body this time. In this weather? Probably not.

He knows it's the stupidest thing he's ever done and there's a storm raging, he'd be caught in the undertow, he'd drown, but he's placed his bets and he lost. He's given everything to a man with two legs, to family dwelling on the land, pretending to fly.

He lost.

His voice taken, his wings taken and his feet bleeding on some forsaken ship for their mistakes. They took his place, his name. They took it and they gave to someone else or stood by and watched, and by their lack of interference _approved. _

This is the stupidest thing he's ever done.

He ignores the wind pelting his face with water, he ignore the slickness of the railing and he stands, tall and proud on the helm, soaked as he's ever been. Smiling he falls, jumps, descends down into the water, a perfect dive.

The waves catch him, pull him under and his lungs feel tight, the impact the cold of the liquid surrounding him. He's in shock he knows it, his muscles cramping, thrown about in every which direction, the air departing his lungs.

He can't see a thing in the inky depths, his eyes shut tight , his feet burning from the salt. His legs feel like they've been doused with acid, the cuts on his thighs opening up, the bandages soaked through long ago.

If there are sharks in this water, he'll know soon enough.

Opening his eyes, he feels the pressure of the liquid and fights to keep them open as his lungs burn for air. He chooses not to struggle, to force his limbs to stillness when every bodily need screams for oxygen.

He opens his eyes and for a moment, for a single moment he sees the glint of scales coming for him, for a moment he thinks, hallucinates most likely, that his legs are fusing together, turning into one single appendage.

For a moment he can hear his mother singing.

…

They find him washed up on the shore, grey skinned and bloated. He is beautiful with his gentle smile and his closed eyes.

He is horrid with bite marks littering his figure, shark teeth and sharp claws.

He is wondrous and covered in glittering scales in grey and blue and green. Every color of the ocean speckling the skin that remained whole.

The call it an -

_Accident. _

Those who live on land and walk on two legs. Those who breathe air and bury him in dirt. Bury him only after the sea has given him back, only after she has dipped under swollen skin and filled hollow lungs. Only after she lets him go.

Those in the water, with their teeth and scales that shimmer in the sunlight, not that they'd know, not that the sun has any place down in their waters. Those that swim they call it -

_Mercy._

The only mercy they know, the dark gods of the sea, nothing like those of the land, too soft, too forgiving for the deepest of the waters.

They call it _freedom_ as they take half, devour half and cast it in the deep, in their bellies and return half to the land that birthed their fallen child. Their half child.

Their child with his weak limbs and his mud walker legs. Their child with his eyes the color of an ocean, with blood the color of a sunrise they've never even seen.

And didn't he know?

No. The voices chorus. A song of mourning spanning the seven seas, a brother lost. A son lost. A child they never even knew.

Didn't they know?

_That half breeds were never meant to swim. _

They find him one morning, beached up on the shore, half of him lost. They say the tide brought him in, that the creatures of the deep got to him, that he fell overboard and never stood a chance. They call it an unhappy accident, a shame.

They don't see the eyes that watch from the water, the eyes that witness their clumsy hands dragging what was left of him to drag.

They find him one morning and they call him Timothy Jackson Drake.

They find him and they call him Timothy.

They find him and they call him son.

They call it sacrifice.


End file.
